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ismail haniyeh
ICC Will Withdraw War Crimes Charges If Sinwar Confirmed Dead. Also: Netanyahu Still Alive
"The ICC's credibility is hanging by a thread," warned one former United Nations official in response to the court's delay in deciding whether to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.
Oct 17, 2024
The office of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan said Thursday that it is "aware of the reports" that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was assassinated by Israeli forces in Gaza, adding that it would withdraw its request for an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the October 7, 2023 attack and imprisonment of hostages if Sinwar's death is confirmed.
"In line with standard practice, the office will take relevant action if sufficient information is received confirming his death," Khan's division said of Sinwar, according toThe Associated Press.
Israeli authorities said DNA, fingerprints, and dental records confirm Sinwar's death.
The announcement left some international critics frustrated at the ICC's delay in issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, more than a year after Israel began its bombardment of Gaza.
In May, Khan announced that he had formally applied for warrants to arrest Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their role "in the crimes of causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, [and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict."
Khan also said he was seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders: Sinwar, former political leader Ismail Haniyeh, and al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged war crimes including extermination, murder, hostage-taking, rape, torture, and other violations of international law.
Haniyeh was assassinated in late July by Israeli operatives in Tehran, Iran. Israel claims to have also killed Al-Masri, although this has not been confirmed.
In a Thursday evening address, Netanyahu asserted that "Hamas will no longer rule Gaza. This is the beginning of the day after Hamas."
"This is an opportunity for you, the residents of Gaza, to finally break free from its tyranny," he added in an appeal to Palestinians in the embattled strip—more than 150,000 of whom have been killed or wounded in a war for which Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Netanyahu's government allowed Hamas—which Israel propped up for years in a bid to counterbalance the power of the Palestinian National Authority—to receive billions of dollars in cash payments via Qatar.
U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement on Sinwar's reported assassination that "this is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world."
Biden claimed U.S. involvement in efforts to find and kill Sinwar.
"Shortly after the October 7 massacres, I directed special operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza," the president said. "With our intelligence help, the [Israel Defense Forces] relentlessly pursued Hamas' leaders, flushing them out of their hiding places and forcing them onto the run."
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, said during a Thursday press conference that "any terrorist who kills Americans, threatens the American people, or threatens our troops or our interests, know this: We will always bring you to justice."
"Israel has a right to defend itself, and the threat Hamas poses to Israel must be eliminated," Harris added. "Today, there is clear progress toward that goal. Hamas is decimated and its leadership is eliminated."
With the ICC accused of moving too slowly in pursuit of arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, Khan has urgedthe court to "urgently render its decisions" on his May applications.
Khan had some reason to tread carefully, as Israel waged a nearly decadelong intimidation campaign against former ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in response to her pursuit of justice for Israeli war criminals.
U.S. lawmakers have also threatened to sanction ICC officials who seek to hold Israeli leaders accountable for violations of international law, and in June dozens of House Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in passing H.R. 8282, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which would sanction ICC personnel involved in efforts to bring Israeli leaders to justice.
In an opinion piece published earlier this week by Al Jazeera, former United Nations official Moncef Khane wrote that "the ICC's credibility is hanging by a thread."
"It took Khan no less than seven months to recommend to the court's pre-trial chamber the issuance of warrants of arrest for Netanyahu and Gallant, notwithstanding a rather formidable amount of evidence of their personal responsibility in the war crimes perpetrated in Gaza," he noted.
"Now that he has done his duty, it is for the three sitting judges of the pre-trial chamber to decide whether to issue the warrants or not," Khane added. "The glaring and extraordinary amount of evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and crime of aggression is such that were they to abscond from their responsibility, they would ring the death knell of the ICC."
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US Congressmen Say 'No War With Iran!'
"Israel's dramatic escalation is completely compatible with its past efforts to drag the U.S. into another war," one expert said of the Israeli assassination of a Hamas leader in Iran.
Aug 04, 2024
Amid mounting fears of a regional war in the Middle East, a pair of Democratic congressmen joined the growing chorus warning against the U.S. engaging in an armed conflict with Iran.
In response to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introducing a resolution to authorize the use of U.S. armed forces against Iran, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on social media Saturday that "the U.S. must not be dragged into a war with Iran."
"The Iraq War was the biggest American blunder of the 21st century," Khanna added. "Every candidate running this cycle must be clear on where they stand on this."
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said early Sunday: "I agree with Ro Khanna. No war with Iran! Let's all get on record with this."
Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, urged Khanna to introduce a related war powers resolution, arguing that "we really could use a clear vehicle like this to increase the pressure for no U.S. military intervention in a disastrous war with Iran."
"We're a miscalculation or a miscue away from an event that could draw the U.S. and Iran into a direct military conflict."
Since Hamas, the Palestinian political and militant group that has controlled the Gaza Strip for nearly two decades, led the October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces—backed by diplomatic and weapons support from U.S. President Joe Biden and Congress—have killed at least 39,583 people in the coastal enclave and injured another 91,398, according to local officials.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—which faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over Gaza—has elevated fears of a regional war this week with an airstrike targeting Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon and the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh at his residence in the Iranian capital of Tehran.
By killing Haniyeh, "Netanyahu has systematically sabotaged cease-fire talks because ending the war will likely end his political career," Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Wednesday.
"Here we go again. Scrambling to prevent total war by pressing Iran not to retaliate," Parsi said Sunday, pointing to the final paragraph of a New York Times opinion piece he wrote in April about a conflict that began with an attack on Iran's diplomatic compound in Syria. "Had Biden forced a Gaza cease-fire, we wouldn't perpetually be on the precipice of war."
Parsi had argued earlier this year that "Mr. Biden has pursued policies that have pushed the Middle East to the precipice of war. His tactical successes in avoiding the worst outcomes of his policies should not be belittled. But they can never make up for his government's broader failure to pursue a strategy that brings real security to America and real peace to the Middle East."
Parsi also highlighted a social media thread from Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who said Sunday that "similar de-escalation/crisis management efforts that helped to defuse the Israel-Iran confrontation in April... are in motion again—only this time, the situation is far more complex and dangerous."
"Stumbling from one escalatory cycle to another and relying heavily on luck to avert a full-blown regional war is unsustainable and irresponsible," she warned. "We're a miscalculation or a miscue away from an event that could draw the U.S. and Iran into a direct military conflict."
"Hoping that cooler heads will prevail time and time again is not a strategy. The diplomatic off-ramps to break the cycle are clear and begin with securing a cease-fire agreement and hostage release in Gaza," she continued. "As we saw during the humanitarian pause in late 2023, every Iranian proxy and aligned group stood down during this period. In addition to ending the bloodshed and massive suffering, a cease-fire would calm the situation in the region, providing time and space for negotiations, large-scale aid, and the rebuilding of Gaza."
Haniyeh's assassination—the details of which are being disputed—has Israel preparing for potential retaliation from Iran and its proxies. Netanyahu on Sunday told a Cabinet meeting that Israel is already in a "multifront war" with both.
According toThe Associated Press, which reported on the prime minister's remarks:
Netanyahu said Israel was ready for any scenario. Jordan's foreign minister was making a rare trip to Iran as part of diplomatic efforts—"We want the escalation to end," Ayman Safadi said—while the Pentagon has moved significant assets to the region.
"We are doing everything possible to make sure that this situation does not boil over," White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told ABC.
The Pentagon confirmed Friday that it was deploying additional military resources to the Middle East, despite reported tension between Biden and Netanyahu, who was in Washington, D.C. last month to address Congress and meet with key U.S. leaders.
Citing an unnamed Biden administration official, Haaretzreported Saturday that the most recent conversations between Biden and Netanyahu, including one at the White House, "were difficult and tense."
As the Israeli newspaper detailed:
"Biden realized that Netanyahu was lying to him about the hostages," the official told Haaretz. "He's not saying it publicly yet, but in the meeting between them, he specifically told him, 'Stop bullshitting me.'"
The official said that the U.S. is preparing to help Israel in the face of Iran and Hezbollah's response to the assassinations that Israel carried out last week in Beirut and Tehran—despite the tension between the two leaders—but made it clear that there would be no American backing for moves that would further expand the scope of the conflict.
"Netanyahu is trying to prolong the war instead of focusing on how to get to a hostage deal," the official said. "It's making it harder for us to continue supporting Israel over time."
Responding to the reporting on social media, Parsi said: "In a shocking turn of events, an Israeli prime minister who has lied to every American president since Bill Clinton, turns around and ** drum roll ** lies to Biden! It took Biden 10 months to 'realize' he was being lied to. TEN MONTHS!!!"
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Netanyhu Assassination Spree Could Set Middle East on Fire
What Netanyahu can be sure he has not done is weaken Hamas.
Aug 01, 2024
In killing Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau in Tehran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sent the clearest message yet to Iran and the resistance movements that he wants a regional war.
In denying any involvement or foreknowledge of the drone strike that killed Haniyeh, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken further damaged Washington’s battered credibility.
US security officials were briefing journalists within an hour of the attack taking place that a senior member of the Axis of Resistance had been killed. They did not specify where or whom, and at first it was thought to be a second strike in Lebanon after the targeting of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander and right-hand man to leader Hassan Nasrallah.
But it is certain that US security officials knew about the drone strike on Haniyeh within minutes of it happening. To cast Netanyahu as a leader in the grip of Jewish messianic fascists in ordering this strike, is only half of the story.
When I met him two decades ago as a political outcast dubbed an extremist by my liberal Zionist hosts, Netanyahu had only one idea to impart: Iran was the mothership. Hamas and Hezbollah were only its aircraft carriers.
Netanyahu’s lifelong belief that he will lead his nation to victory by crushing the Palestinian national cause and preventing a state from ever seeing the light of day can never be discounted.
Today, he might think he is on the cusp of his ultimate political achievement as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, by dragging the U.S. and Britain into war with Iran.
Negotiations torn up
Netanyahu sent other messages, too, in killing Haniyeh, who had no involvement in the Hamas attack on 7 October, and whose bureau was in charge of negotiations with mediators Qatar and Egypt.
Netanyahu has torn up negotiations and any thought of getting the hostages back alive. This should already have been obvious from the latest round of talks in Rome, where the Israeli side multiplied its conditions around phase one of the deal.
It was evident, too, from Netanyahu’s last visit to Rafah, where he vowed Israel would retain indefinite control of the Philadelphi corridor.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has asked how negotiations can proceed when Israel has killed its negotiating counterpart.
Even without a ceasefire, Haniyeh was worth more to Israel alive than dead
In fact, Haniyeh was one member of a negotiating committee, which will carry on without him.
Al Thani’s barbed reaction was aimed at Netanyahu, who has done everything in his power to escalate regional tensions and to undermine the US administration’s position on a permanent ceasefire, and its consistent opposition to opening a second front in Lebanon.
In killing a mild man like Haniyeh, who did not hide underground but lived out in the open, and who dedicated his career to negotiations and engagement with the Islamic world in Qatar, Turkey and Iran, Israel has killed a leader it could one day need to negotiate a hudna, or long-term ceasefire.
Out of the equation
In person, Haniyeh was amiable, mild-mannered, an attentive listener, modest—the complete diplomat. He was never one to speak ill of Fatah or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
If, as now must be obvious even to the Israeli military, it will not be able to defeat or disable Hamas in Gaza, Israel will need people in Hamas to negotiate with. They have just killed one of them.
From a strategic point of view, Israel’s action is madness. This is not my word, but that used by former Israeli General Amiram Levin, who added, with some understatement, that the “security forces should’ve strongly opposed” the move.
Even without a ceasefire, Haniyeh was worth more to Israel alive than dead.
Israel could have plausibly argued to a western audience that it would not surrender Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to the International Criminal Court in The Hague while another of those named in the ICC’s application for arrest warrants, Haniyeh, was free to live in Qatar and roam around the region.
Pressure would have inevitably been applied on Qatar to surrender him and expel the political bureau of Hamas.
Now that he is out of the equation, Israel has lost that defence. All this, Israel has achieved in killing Haniyeh.
Hamas strengthened
What Netanyahu can be sure he has not done is weaken Hamas.
Quite the contrary. Haniyeh, a modest man who lost 60 members of his family, including sons and grandsons, to Israel in this war, will go down as one of Hamas’ greatest martyrs.
The moment Haniyeh learned that his sons and grandsons had been killed in cars struck by Israeli forces during Eid, he was visiting a hospital in Doha where injured Palestinians from Gaza were being treated.
He said only: “May God have mercy on them,” but he refused to interrupt his visit. The clip went viral, because it spoke more than words could have done about his ability to put the Palestinian cause above his personal grief as a father.
Israel has killed countless Hamas leaders and commanders, and the movement has only grown - in recruits, weaponry and political influence. Today, polls show that Hamas would win in the West Bank if free elections were allowed to take place there.
The Hamas that has resisted Israel’s attack on Gaza for 10 months is many times the size and capabilities of the Hamas in the days of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The quadriplegic founder of Hamas was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at him as he was being wheeled from Fajr prayers in Gaza. Haniyeh was his chief of staff. That assassination was internationally condemned.
The Israeli military knows the truth: that killing Haniyeh was last thing they should be doing if they want to see any of their hostages back alive
Hamas’ stock has risen, not fallen, in Palestine and the Arab and Muslim world since the 7 October attack. This is the only reason why the 88-year-old Abbas, who has continuously torn up reconciliation agreements, paid homage on Wednesday to his slain rival.
Abbas condemned the killing as “a cowardly act and a dangerous development”, and called on Palestinians to unite. Abbas spoke out of fear and political necessity, not out of any love for Hamas.
Within days of a reconciliation agreement among Palestinian factions negotiated in Beijing, Abbas’ security forces tried and failed to arrest an injured commander of the Tulkarm Battalion from a hospital in the occupied West Bank.
So you can be absolutely sure that Abbas has no intention of unifying Fatah with the other Palestinian factions. Fatah’s negotiator in Beijing might have been sincere, but for Abbas, Beijing was for show only. It made no difference on the ground in the occupied West Bank.
Fire in the region, fire at home
Nor is it a coincidence that Haniyeh’s assassination was ordered within a day of Israeli fascists and far-right members of the Knesset breaking into a detention facility in an attempt to prevent soldiers from being arrested for raping a Palestinian prisoner.
Setting fire to the region is Netanyahu’s only response to the bushfire that is breaking out at home and on his doorstep.
Hundreds of detainees have emerged with harrowing accounts of the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre. Middle East Eye first reported on how iron bars, electric shocks, dogs and cigarette burns were used in torturing Palestinian detainees at Israeli detention centres.
Omar Mahmoud Abdel Qader Samoud, who was detained for more than 42 days, said one of the rooms in the facility was known as the “disco”.
“A soldier dragged me on the floor, naked and handcuffed, and placed me on a piece of rug,” Samoud told MEE. “The soldiers sprayed freezing cold water on me and placed a fan in front of me. They would leave me for a few days, without food or water or the possibility to get up and go to the bathroom. I urinated on myself and pleaded for mercy but they didn’t care.
“The soldiers would kick me on all parts of my body,” he added. “Imagine yourself naked, handcuffed on the floor with five or six soldiers kicking you with their boots, hitting you with weapons and bats. Then they asked me to sit up. How could I possibly sit up? When I couldn’t follow their orders they would beat me even harder. They completely smashed me. I thought this nightmare would never end.”
A month later, an anonymous doctor working at the same centre said limbs were amputated because of handcuff injuries, noting: “We are all complicit in breaking the law.”
No one was detained; nothing was investigated. But as pressure mounted from the ICC about war crimes in Gaza, alongside the ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Israeli military prosecutors felt obliged to act.
Israel could not argue that a domestic judicial process existed to examine such allegations of torture during detention, if the state did not use it. So nine soldiers accused of sexual abuse against a detainee, which led to him being hospitalised with serious injuries to his rectum, were arrested.
Breakdown of the state
What happened next was a complete breakdown of the state, similar to the 2021 assault on Congress by Trump supporters.
The arrests were met by angry demonstrations at the gates of Sde Teiman, with several protesters temporarily breaching the gates. Among the protesters were reservist soldiers, as well as two far-right parliamentarians: Zvi Sukkot, a member of the Religious Zionist movement, and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu of the Jewish Power party.
Police took three hours to arrive. Herzi Halevi, the army’s chief of general staff, had to break off a defence meeting on Israel’s response to the recent attack on the Golan Heights to deal with the crisis. The army and police each blamed each other for the breakdown in law and order.
For a time, the accused soldiers barricaded themselves into Sde Teiman and used pepper spray to defend themselves against arrest, before eventually being taken into custody.
When Hezbollah threatens to close Ben Gurion Airport, or knock out the Israeli electrical grid, these are not empty threats
It is a mistake often made by those who style themselves as friends of Israel to cast such scenes as a fight between moderates and the extreme messianic right. This is wholly illusory, for the “moderates” are fully on board with continuing the murderous Gaza campaign. The “moderates” voted for the recent Knesset bill that rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Where they differ is means, rather than ends.
Israelis who cling to their western identity are past masters of seizing Palestinian land in salami slices - subtly, quietly, without great fuss; but patiently, one property, one street, one high court case at a time. They care about their image, about being called global pariahs, and about the label of apartheid or war crimes being pinned on them personally.
The religious Zionist right, on the other hand, don’t give a tinker’s cuss about world opinion or international courts. They want annexation of the West Bank now. The sooner it happens, the better.
Call it two-speed Zionism, but the goal is the same: a one-state solution in which the modern state of Israel dominates, if not overlays, the biblical Land of Israel, the land from the river to the sea.
Deepening fractures
But it is a mistake, too, to underplay the ever-deepening fractures within Israel, which are occurring in the middle of a major war.
Israel portrays itself to the outside world as the one functioning state in a neighbourhood of failed ones. You don’t have to build a state in Israel, Netanyahu once bragged to US politicians in one of his many appearances before Congress: “We’re already built.”
But that state is showing distinct signs of failing, too.
Napoleon and Hitler were at the height of their powers, and their respective armies had tamed Europe under their jackboots, when each dictator thought it would be a good idea to attack Russia.
So, too, is Netanyahu endangering everything Israel has achieved in establishing a strong state by openly creating the conditions for a regional war.
The Israeli military knows the truth: that killing Haniyeh was the last thing they should be doing if they want to see any of their hostages back alive. They know they are not ready to attack southern Lebanon, because they don’t have enough tanks or ammunition.
They know how well-armed Hezbollah, the Houthis and other resistance groups are, and how effective their rockets are. They know about geography and distances, and the vulnerability of Israel’s population and economy to war on five fronts simultaneously. When Hezbollah threatens to close Ben Gurion Airport, or knock out the Israeli electrical grid, these are not empty threats.
Israeli security establishments also know they are in danger of losing command and control over their troops, and if they give the order to withdraw, many units may not obey.
Israel under Netanyahu’s leadership is making the classic mistake of all colonial powers. It is overreaching in the messianic belief that the Jews really are God’s chosen people; that the Bible ordained all of what is happening now, and that Israel can achieve its goal of complete military victory.
It is precisely at this moment that it is at its most vulnerable, and that the project could collapse.
In the final years of apartheid, the South African regime went into hyperdrive. It decided to overthrow the government of Angola, install a puppet regime in Namibia, and attack Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zambia—all fruitless projects that could not stave off regime collapse. Netanyahu’s Israel is treading the same path.
For nothing other than self-preservation, those who understand this should act before Netanyahu involves them in a war they could not possibly stop, still less win.
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